Vortex Jazz Club
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Vortex Jazz Club is a London venue that primarily features live contemporary jazz.
The Vortex started as a jazz club in 1987 and was located in Church Street, Stoke Newington. However following the acquisition of that building by property developers, the club relocated in 2005 to the Dalston Culture House in Gillett Street, N16, where it is at the heart of the newly-created Gillett Square, one of mayor Ken Livingstone's 100 public spaces for London. The Square opened on 10 November 2006 with a performance by Andy Sheppard's Saxophone Massive, comprised of 200 saxophonists. The street in front of the club was renamed Bailey Place in December 2007, after guitarist Derek Bailey.
Many respected jazz musicians have played at the Vortex, ranging from Last Amendment, F-IRE Collective, Derek Bailey, Kenny Wheeler, Evan Parker, John Etheridge, Tim Berne, and Django Bates to name but a few. The first release on the club's own record label is by the Portico Quartet.
The club was started by ex-taxi driver David Mossman in the late eighties, and through his open-minded booking policy it became perhaps the only venue which consistently was able to put on contemporary jazz nightly, justifying the epithet "London's listening jazz club". The new venue in Dalston continues this approach and attitude.
The club was nominated as a venue of the year by the Parliamentary Jazz Appreciation Group in 2006 and 2007.
The original club developed such an affinity with its locality that local residents established the Occupied Vortex Social Centre at the club's original site for two months in early 2007 in protest at the proposed demolition of the building for the construction of a Starbucks and upmarket apartments.
